– What is the secret of your success?
– I don’t argue. This frees up time and energy.
– Ok… But surely some arguing sometimes is actually useful?
– Sure.

This to me seemed like one of those light bulb moments. I knew it before but this story summed it up perfectly. I used to love arguments. Prove myself right by all means. Then I read The Power of Now, and the idea that arguments are manifestations of our egos trying to prove themselves right stuck with me.

Long story short, ego’s main motivation is avoidance of death (see Jason Silva’s powerful and eye opening talk on this). It hence is constantly engaged in business of proving its existence, one way to do which is to be right. Hence that feeling you have when you have engaged into argument, it escalated and you want to win it at any price is your ego trying to avoid its mortality. Which is pretty stupid because immortality does not exist.

Stop it!

How much time and energy I spent on arguing! Now whenever someone tries to engage me into argument, I remember the story above and simply say – sure. There are as many opinions as there are people, whatever is true in your universe at the moment may not be true in somebody else’s. So, people who love to argue, relax and go do something truly important.